A new study conducted by Isabelle Jonveaux of the University of Fribourg found that 30 percent of all monasteries in France have closed since 2007.
The study — as reported by The Catholic Herald — discovered that female communities were affected worse than their male counterparts.
“Women’s religious life is more in crisis, because it is less adapted to the profile of young women today than in the past,” Jonveaux said. “In the past, religious life was a path of emancipation for women, allowing them to form or escape patriarchal authority. Today, in Europe, women who enter the monastery are often in their thirties, they have studied and are autonomous.”
The breakdown in communities is as follows:
- Carmelite and Poor Clares monasteries: about 40 percent closed;
- Trappist monasteries 36.4 percent closed;
- Dominican monasteries 8 percent closed;
- Benedictine monasteries 18 percent closed.
Notably, the study found that orders that adopted traditional liturgical practices were not negatively impacted.
“Of the communities whose liturgical service was French in 2007, 34 percent closed, dropping to 19 percent for those who used French and Latin. The research found that no communities closed for those whose liturgy was celebrated exclusively in Latin,” The Catholic Herald related.
Latin Mass communities are flourishing
Jonveaux’s study is ample proof of the good fruits of traditional liturgical practices.
The Priestly Fraternity of St Peter, for instance, has slowly increased its ranks since being founded in 1988, recording 162 seminarians last year. The Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest has likewise grown, nearly doubling in size since 2017, with the Sister Adorers of the Royal Heart of Jesus Christ Sovereign Priest now boasting over 70 members.
Since 1970, the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (SSPX) has also multiplied. In 1988, the Los Angeles Times reported the SSPX as having 210 priests. Today, the Society boasts over 730 priests, 145 brothers, 250 sisters, 88 oblates, and 264 seminarians serving over 600,000 Society faithful.
The Dispatch
Adopting the Novus Ordo results in fewer churches
In the Archdiocese of Chicago — where the Latin Mass has all but been extinguished — half of the parishes have closed since the adoption of the Novus Ordo following Vatican II. 1 Alarmingly, there were just two priests ordained to serve the two million Catholics who live in the archdiocese in 2025.
By contrast, the Society of St. Pius X ordained 15 priests this year, and is planning a massive expansion in North Carolina, where Bishop Michael Martin and neighboring Bishop Mark Beckman have further cracked down on diocesan Latin Masses.
Aside from that, retention rates are noticeably higher in Latin Mass communities than that of the Novus Ordo. In the United States alone, two-thirds of all seminaries have closed since Vatican II’s liturgical reforms were implemented. Catholic schools are even worse. In the early 1960s, there were roughly 13,000 Catholic schools in the United States. Today, there are just under 6,000 remaining. Nearly every seminary and Catholic school in the United States offers the Novus Ordo Missae.
The Modernist Church kills everything it touches
A few months ago, I hypothesized that any exposure to the new Mass in excess of 30 percent would start to negatively impact a person’s chances of remaining Catholic, let alone their faithful adherence to the Church and Her moral teachings.
That assessment reflects the sentiments expressed by newly-consecrated SSPX Bishop Michael Goldade when, in Écône last month, he said, “The Modernist Church is a desert. It kills everything that it touches, it kills the supernatural life, it kills the sources of grace. It dries up everything. Because it has placed man in the place of God.”
Some commentators thought this language was too harsh. But if we reflect the specific areas in which the “deaths” he was referring to have occurred, we see that the data supports his claim.
The Modernist Church has killed vocations, it has killed Catholic schools, it is killing seminaries, it is drying up the faith of our children, and it is suffocating the Latin Mass — the source of vocations and spiritual well-being — in parishes around the world, especially in France, where it is killing communities of souls who are consecrated to God.
By contrast, in traditional religious groups, there is sustained growth and resilient faith on display. As Our Lord said in the Gospel of Matthew: “By their fruits you shall know them.”
